Dr Xanthe Scharff: Mackenzie Scott gifts, collaborative funding & combatting modern slavery

Send us Fan MailOn this episode we are joined by Dr Xanthe Scharff, Managing Director for External Affairs and Editor-at-Large at the Freedom Fund, to discuss their work combatting modern slavery and what it is like to receive not one but two major gifts from Mackenzie Scott. Including:What is Freedom Fund’s mission, and how does it go about delivering on this?What is the scale of modern slavery as an issue? How much philanthropic funding does modern slavery currently attract? How did the original Mackenzie Scott gift come about? ($35m in 2021).How did the second gift then come about? Was there any difference in process from the first gift?What have the gifts from Mackenzie Scott enabled Freedom Fund to do that it otherwise would not have been able to do? Freedom Fund chose to spend the $60m it received from Mackenzie Scott, rather than creating an endowment – what was the thinking behind this?How do you balance increased support for existing partners against the need to expand your work by finding new partners?Will the funding from Mackenzie Scott make it easier or harder to leverage further philanthropic funding? How does the Freedom Fund work as a collaborative/pooled fund?Do collaborative funds make it easier for donors to fund things that they might otherwise deem “too risky”?When it comes to risk, is the role of an intermediary like Freedom Fund to reduce the risk for funders, or to help them shift their own risk tolerance so they can fund directly in future?Are there challenges in the current political moment when it comes to working on an issue like modern slavery, which overlaps with highly politicised issues around immigration?Have wider attacks on the legitimacy of nonprofits and philanthropy have an effect on Freedom Foundation’s work?Further Resources:Freedom Fund"How MacKenzie Scott channeled $4 billion via collaboratives", Devex"MacKenzie Scott Gave us $60m. We're Giving it Away", Chronicle of PhilanthropyWPM article, "MacKenzie Scott & the History of Challenging Philanthropy’s Status Quo"Philanthropisms podcast episodes with Rachael Jarosh & Suzanne Ehlers; Elizabeth Barajas-Román; and Sara Lomelin.