Bonnie Chiu
As wealth transfers are set to benefit women more than men in coming decades, women are playing increasingly decisive roles in philanthropy.
This trend is particularly prevalent in an emerging and growing area of philanthropy – spend-down philanthropy, where philanthropists and foundations set a time limit to channel their giving. Proponents of spend-down philanthropy cite that this model enables foundations to achieve their mission with greater urgency, given the daunting scale of social and environmental challenges. Women are leading this new wave in philanthropy – but why and how?
Official data do not exist on whether women are statistically more likely to lead spend-down foundations, but out of a handful of philanthropic leaders and advisors I interviewed, there seems to be a trend around women increasingly leading spend-down foundations. ‘I’ve observed a distinct trend: women are increasingly leading the charge in establishing and guiding limited-life foundations’, says Sofia Michelakis, Managing Director at Phīla Engaged Giving , a Black-owned and women-led philanthropic advisory firm. A Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors report from 2020 found that mearly half of the organisations established in the 2010s were founded as time-limited vehicles, compared to 20% in the 1980s.
Is it a mere coincidence that women are leading many of the spend-down foundations? Interviews with women leading such foundations suggest that it is not. ‘I don’t want to essentialise women leaders as embodying a certain set of traits’, says Nwamaka Agbo, CEO of Kataly Foundation, a family foundation set up in 2018 with an endowment of $445 million, intending to spend down within ten years. Nwamaka reflects on her own lived experience as a queer Black woman, ‘I intimately understand how people and communities have experienced harm from people in power. Because of that understanding, I do my best to lead from a place of empathy’. Experiences of oppression and injustices may indeed be more commonly shared by women in society.
This acute awareness of power in philanthropy, and the commitment to shifting it, are echoed by other women leaders in similar positions. ‘This idea of legacy, as a multigenerational enduring institution, was never her relationship with her wealth’, says Dena Kimball of her mother, Diana Blank, who set up the Kendeda Foundation. ‘She felt she was stewarding it for a moment. She saw a great comfort and ease that this period was over. The decision to spend out was a natural extension of her relationship to the wealth she has. It was a lightness rather than holding tight. She has a different definition of ‘philanthropist”. Michelakis of Phīla Engaged Giving, based on their experiences of advising close to 35 clients on their philanthropic strategies, has a similar observation: ‘I often see women being more humble, openly sharing their successes and challenges, so they contribute to a richer understanding of what works in philanthropy and what doesn’t’.
For some, the commitment to shifting power is borne from personal experiences, but for others, it is also a conscious, political choice. ‘Philanthropy is a product of capitalism and the uneven distribution of wealth. There’s a link between this and patriarchy. There’s a questioning of perpetuity among women leaders, that perpetuity is not the unspoken absolute’, says Lori Bezahler, President of Hazen Foundation, which closed its door in May 2024 after 100 years of operations and gave away nearly $400 milllion. Michelakis of Phīla Engaged Giving further adds that ‘Women philanthropic leaders tend to focus on creating comprehensive change, addressing root causes of issues rather than just symptoms, which is particularly effective in the limited-life foundation model’.
‘The responsibility of righting these systemic wrongs should not fall on women alone’.
Women are more attracted to leading spend-down foundations, based on their own lived experiences, as well as their beliefs in a different philosophy of change. However, is this a good or bad thing?
In academic literature on women’s leadership, the term glass cliff describes the phenomenon ‘occurs when women do reach the top levels of the corporate ladder—but only during crisis when the company is experiencing poor performance or turmoil’, or when the risk of failure is high. This phenonmenon is also applicable to the non-profit sector. Glass cliff is generally seen as a risky and challenging phenomenon for women leaders and leaders of colour. In the case of spend-down foundations, by definition, it is about leading organisations to closure, and there is a risk that further perpetuates the gender norms that women and people of colour leaders are otherwise not ‘fit’ to lead perpetual foundations.
There is also an aspect of leading spend-down foundations, that speak to female leadership traits – which may be a double-edged sword for women leaders. Women leaders reflected that being female may have led them into the jobs of sun-setting organisations. One aspect is the belief that women leaders have skills to ‘turn things around’, as researched and reported in Harvard Business Review. ‘It’s interesting to note that when foundation boards are deciding who should lead spend-out foundations, they often choose women for these roles. Women, and women of colour in particular, are often charged with “fixing” injustices within our existing systems’, says Agbo of Kataly Foundation.
One aspect of women’s ‘suitability’ for leading spend-down foundations is to do with navigating emotions. Research and conventional wisdom recognise that women tend to be more emotionally intelligent than men. As with any closure events and losses, leading spend-down foundations requires navigating complex emotions. ‘I did not anticipate the full emotional weight of both the process of making the decision through to implementation. The emotional labor of dealing with it and supporting the family through the transition’, says Bezahler of Hazen Foundation. Women already shoulder the majority of emotional labour at work and at home, which is draining and typically goes unrecognised. Choosing women for roles that require navigating complex emotions precisely because of their relevant ability may further perpetuate this imbalance in workplaces. As Agbo of Kataly Foundation acknowledges, “the responsibility of righting these systemic wrongs should not fall on women alone.”
That said, ending foundations well can also be a positive, uplifting experience, so it may not always be draining. Kimball of Kendeda Foundation spoke of the joyful process as they finished in December 2023: ‘While we miss the team and relationships with each other, we also think this is healthy. Philanthropy is an incredibly inspiring field, but it is also a distorted space’.
To conclude, it seems that women are indeed uniquely placed to lead spend-down foundations, but the risk of the ‘glass cliff’ remains – where women leaders are only given the hardest, likeliest to ‘fail’ jobs in the philanthropic sector. The only way to combat this is for the philanthropic field to recognise – for all of our sake, that we need spend-down foundations to become mainstream, and those leading them are the movers and shakers of the philanthropy world. It is the next frontier of philanthropy, and women are now leading the charge.
First published on Alliance magazine