#125 Futurist inspired by history, Rhodri Davies founder & Director of Why Philanthropy Matters?

<p>Rhodri (Rhod) Davies joins Purposely Podcast to share his passion and knowledge on philanthropy and how he started the ‘Why Philanthropy Matters’ a free online platform helping to shape the sector. Rhod is a well-known thinker and commentator on philanthropy and civil society as well as an author and host of the popular Philanthropisms podcast. He is also a Pears Research Fellow in the Centre for Philanthropy at the University of Kent, United Kingdom. He was working as an academic researcher when he stumbled across philanthropy, suddenly seeing the sector in a new light full of ‘drama and interest’ and a plausible career option. Since then Rhod has become a defender and advocate of philanthropy and has gone on to play an important role in shaping the movement. ‘One of the things that bugged me is that philanthropy is often written off as if it's some sort of weird, niche concern, even within the wider nonprofit world. To me, it's something that's kind of pretty fundamental to how society works’. One of the things that characterises Rhod’s thought leadership on philanthropy is his skill and willingness to draw on history and what has happened in the past to make sense of the future. ‘History is an endlessly useful resource, when it comes to thinking about philanthropy in the present’. He describes this as a ‘cheap trick’, he uses to try and ensure that people in the sector do not get carried away with one particular approach to giving. He describes how those seemingly, ‘never been thought of before’, ways of doing philanthropy are in fact developed using lessons from the past. One example he points to is the current focus on purpose driven companies, organisations and businesses who are prioritising a combination of purpose, profit and commercial returns. The tendency is that people pass this off as completely new and highly innovative, despite the fact that people have been doing this for centuries. The same can be said for other forms of doing good or delivering impact today. ‘When you look back to history, a