February
03
Social investment is about results, not intentions according to an opinion piece by Swinburne's Michael Liffman:
Welcoming the new intake of students each year into our masters program in philanthropy and social investment at Swinburne University in Melbourne, I tend to startle them with a simple formulation. I propose that the whole purpose of the course of study, to which they have just committed a considerable amount of time and money, can be summed up in four words. It is, simply put, to "support results, not intentions".
Behind these words, however, stand a number of formidable intellectual, ethical and practical challenges. Possibly the biggest challenge is the recognition that virtue does not exonerate the virtuous from responsibility for their actions, nor protect them from scrutiny.
Especially where philanthropists are giving money away -- often with support, in the form of tax relief, from the taxpayer -- there are, I argue, two responsibilities: at the least a responsibility to do no harm, and then, if not to maximise the gift's benefit, at least to do some real good.
While these propositions seem to me to be self-evident, they are not widely accepted. Why else is our program of serious education and research in social investment at Swinburne almost unique among universities, not just in Australia but internationally?
By comparison, the world drowns in business schools and MBAs for those entering the field of financial investment. Why do we so often hear the comment that when businesspeople join non-profit boards they ``leave their brains at the door''? Why do fundraisers, who should know better, so often claim that their charity ensures that every dollar given goes directly to needy recipients? The implication, clearly, is that the task of relieving social ills and creating a better society requires no planning, understanding, analysis and organisational infrastructure.
All of which, in reality, have to be paid for and should be paid for.
The proposition that social investment is about results, not intentions, invites us not only to give greater scrutiny to good intentions but also to be less judgmental than the community sector tends to be about motivation for giving and fundraising. Motivations are rarely untainted by self- interest -- community or business profile, marketing, the regard of others, the assuaging of guilt, or simply the wish to feel good -- and judging others is frequently a presumptuous undertaking. Intentions, of course, should be queried when their motivation is in some way heinous. But, that apart, motivation should matter only because of the conditions that might accompany a good project, and on the results that project is likely to achieve.
The fact that someone may make a generous and thoughtful gift as part of an ambition to achieve leadership of a community agency, or that it comes from a company seeking to improve its brand recognition, shouldn't matter -- unless it comes with a condition that the donor be elected, or that the recipient manipulate its clients into using the donor's product.
Perhaps Paul Keating's observation that he was all in favour of self-interest ``because at least you know it's trying'' overstated the case a little. But it remains a useful corrective to many of the prevailing holier-than-thou pronouncements.
A focus on the results of projects that aim to do good, rather than on the intentions that accompany them, carries with it one other big challenge: a serious assessment as to whether the project is really needed. Some mandatory questions should always be asked: What is this new undertaking likely to be able to achieve? What priority should we give it over other possibilities? Who should be undertaking it? And when it is completed, what has it actually achieved? Again, these may seem self-evident questions. In practice they rarely are asked with the necessary due diligence.
Doing good, or wanting to do good, also requires a willingness to admit to failure, or unintended consequences. Consider one example: the laudable intentions behind the 1966 decision to grant equal pay to Aboriginal stockmen have had the unintended consequence four decades later of creating a generation and more of unemployed Aborigines with all that entails for social breakdown. It's a painful failure to accept.
But taking an approach to social investment that emphasises results, not intentions, which faces failure as much as it praises success, demands serious intellectual effort.
It involves a range of professional skills: research, policy analysis, project management, as well as the more subtle ones of judgment and emotional intelligence.
There's one other shadow that too often falls between an intention and a result: orthodoxy.
Few of us can take our bearings on any social issue from an unconstrained menu of possibilities, move away from our ideological comfort zone, and apply only evidence-based analysis and independent judgment.
One of the commentators I most avidly read these days is the British writer and psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple, who blames the welfarists for most of Britain's ills. He argues that they have sapped individuals of any sense of personal responsibility and created a society that knows no moral boundaries. Although I haven't yet allowed myself to be totally persuaded, and so jettison a lifetime of beliefs, Dalrymple deeply unsettles me.
In Australia, Noel Pearson is another such unsettling thinker. For Pearson, the starting point has been what he sees happening around him to his people, rather than what the ascendant theories or conventional philosophies might dictate.
We need such unsettlement, not just on our policies towards Aborigines but across the social sector, as much as we need the reinforcement of our readiness to do good. But to help our good intentions work, we need to enlist rigour alongside sentiment.
In a previous column in this series, Sam Lipski explained the shift made by our centre to the language of social investment. The coming generation -- and it is potentially a large one -- of generous, concerned Australians should not hesitate to be as rigorous about their social commitments as they are about their finances. The challenges our world faces require no less.
Michael Liffman is founding director of the Asia-Pacific Centre for Social Investment at Swinburne University.
